


The Cauldron Cake

by Snegurochka



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-06
Updated: 2007-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snegurochka/pseuds/Snegurochka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cauldron cake was a surprisingly difficult piece of baking. It was always the things that looked so simple that concealed the most secrets, wasn't it?</p><p>1,000 words. PG-13. Lily, with implied James/Sirius. Infidelity. For a candy challenge, where my prompts were 'Lily' and 'cauldron cakes.' February 2007.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cauldron Cake

The cauldron cake, Lily mused as she wiped her hands on her apron, was a surprisingly difficult piece of baking.

It looked simple enough from the outside; to the untrained eye, it was circular, a bit squat, and smelled vaguely of chocolate. How hard could it be? Pop some flour into a bowl, maybe add some sugar and spice (conveniently neglecting _everything nice_), add a bit of cocoa, and _Poof!_ Cauldron cake. It was almost like magic.

Pity, then, that the actual recipe was nothing of the sort. It was always the things that looked so simple that concealed the most secrets, wasn't it?

_God, come here…_

_Stop it, no, she's right downstairs. Fuck… okay, no, put your shirt back on._

_Take yours off._

_She knows, Padfoot! Okay? She fucking knows that you – oh, oh, okay, just keep doing – _

_That?_

_Fuck._

_She doesn't know anything. Just let me –_

__There was flour, yes, that part was easy. Sixteen ounces of white flour to start, sifted into her mother's old mixing bowl. If only Petunia knew Lily used the coveted Evans family mixing bowl for _cauldron cakes_, that staple of the Wizarding world's culinary excess, she could likely make a pot of tea with the steam that would come out of her ears. Lily sighed as the bowl filled. She could use magic, she knew that, but there was something comforting in baking the way her mother had taught her, with only a bowl, a spoon, and few hours' spare time.

Flour was dry but silky, sliding through her fingers while coating them at the same time and then turning to thick, white paste when she tried to wash it off. Freedom to move, and freedom to be stuck. Flour was funny that way.

Sugar was a whole other story, though. Harmless when dry but as messy as glue when wet, it almost wasn't worth the trouble it caused just for a spot of sweetness. It was always the troublemakers, after all, who pretended to be sweet as sugar and laced with icing. Always the messy ones who were first to be lured away by the promise of a sweet new taste just around the corner. Always the first to slip through her fingers if she didn't take care to add enough water or stir just right.

_God, get your hand – _

_There?_

_Just – fuck. Fuck. There, just there, you've got to –_

_Come on, James, you can do better than that. Wider, come on – _

_I can't – she's going to –_

_No, she's not. Spread for me, just – _

_Okay, just – oh God –_

_Relax. It's just me._

_I know. Okay, I know, just – do that again –  
_  
Butter was the real bitch of it, truth be told. There was something outright sinister about butter, but she could never quite put her finger on what it was. Maybe it was that sickly yellow hue, or the obscene droplets of moisture that glistened on top of the bar after it had been out of the fridge for half an hour, or the neat fucking packaging of the whole thing. As if anything was so simple that it could just be packed up into a rectangle with smooth edges and not a streak of cream out of place. She wanted to rake her nails down that stupid bar of butter, mess up its perfection, make it ugly and jagged and gouged so that no one would want it.

No one would put a bar like _that_ in their cauldron cakes. It could just rot on the shelf at the store for all she cared, twisted and mangled with its pain on display for all to see. Butter like that fucking _deserved_ to be ignored and shamed, didn't it?

_Harder, you fucking tease._

_Like this?_

_God, like that, like that, like that – _

_Harder?_

_Fuck me, Padfoot, fuck, just like that –  
_  
Best not to even get started on the cocoa, then. It depended on whether one used cocoa powder or bars of semi-sweet chocolate, really. The powder was easier, to be sure – light and easy-going and always willing to help out, but it also made a hell of a mess on her counters and had a way of wedging into the cracks in the tiles and hunkering down in there for the long haul. But bars tasted better. They were hell to melt just so, more finicky than a potion in the way you had to stir the pot constantly with even rotations, but once you got it melted and folded in with the flour and sugar and, yes, that fucking butter, it blended into a seamless whole that tasted just the way an expert cauldron cake should.

She had been resisting this, telling herself that she could do it alone, that the powder would be enough, that everything would be all right if she could just get through one more batch, but she couldn't. She needed help.

It was time to call in the semi-sweet bar and see if he could melt in seamlessly once again.

When the cakes came out of the oven, she hooked a strand of black licorice across the tops of each one, placed them carefully on a charmed travelling tray, donned her cloak, and didn't bother leaving a note for James. She hopped in the Floo without a backward glance, arriving in the familiar dusty flat with a cough.

Peter glanced up from a piece of parchment that was black around the edges and glowing a sickly green.

"Lily?" he asked, his eyes wide and his mouth open. The parchment fluttered to the floor.

"You like cauldron cakes, don't you?" She set the tray on his kitchen table and brushed the soot from her cloak.

"I – yes. Thank you." He reached tentatively for the tray.

"I have to ask you a favour, Peter," she said quickly, before she lost her nerve.

He paused, his fingers thick around a cupcake. "I – what is it?"

Her breath came in short gasps and she sat down to steady herself. That was the thing about cauldron cakes: they were a bitch to make and left you unsteady on your feet, but still you'd always come back for more. She met his eyes. "I need you to be our Secret-Keeper," she said quietly. "I need you to hide us, and to keep my husband away from Sirius Black."

 

-fin-


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